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User blog:Orgodemir27/Rinzler's Journal - Alturiak 1
“''Don’t you see that it’s better that they’re dead? How much safer and easier it is with the lot of them gone?” Ugh, the ''audacity of that statement is mind-boggling. Better, that you nearly eradicated a local species? Better, that a group of intelligent beings was murdered en-masse after they had already been driven from their homes by another group of beings only concerned with fighting and border disputes? Yes, they were invasive, but I have yet to see or hear of any intelligent non-invasive creatures. I wonder if those are related; likely, as intelligence would almost certainly have to be linked to the desire to control your surrounding environment, which leads to shelter construction and farming, or at the very least systematic hunting. It also might be linked to a more complicated social Regardless, the kobolds were only in the fields to begin with due to the goblins forcing them out of the forest, and so then were only trying to survive. I can’t imagine that transitioning from life in the forest to life in the fields would be particularly easy; food would be entirely different, no shelter, no trees, who knows how many of their number, their families/hunters/mothers had been killed by the goblins, how many survivors moved to the fields. Certainly their leader was aggressive, but wouldn’t the leader of any intelligent race, forced to round up the survivors of an enforced exile have to be? This is without factoring that the undead stalked the place heavily at night, and they were significantly more combatively powerful then the kobolds. But combat prowess, that’s the crux, isn’t it? It always is. ‘I don’t like you, I want this space, I don’t particularly agree with your life-views or business practices, but, it looks like I can murder you without too much issue, so there are my problems solved.’ Kobolds are slightly inconveniencing us? Kill their leader! Gnolls are taking slaves? Kill them all! Oni guarding a bridge? Kill it. Hobgoblins, ogres, dragons, Cinder Man, Necromancer, Witch Woods, Plainsview, "fix" it, change it, destroy everything that’s an inconvenience, a threat, something that may turn around and hurt us later, no matter how remote the possibility that it might. Well, I suppose in the last case they mostly realized that murder was just slightly less legal when it happens in town, so they restricted themselves to impersonation, trespassing, petty theft and citizen’s arrest. I’m still not certain why it bothers me, since none of it impacts me personally in any way; I suppose it’s a matter of association. While I generally wouldn’t care that what was once an exploration team has changed priorities to favour moralistic vigilantism and border-defending zealotry, the facts remain that I still need to work with them and that my name is associated with their work. Well, I’m generally only tangentially attributed to their actions for the most part, and since I don’t have the ability to kill a man with my bare hands or the ability to snap my fingers and alter the laws of nature, I’m not really in any position to challenge their decisions, thanks to the current mantra of might-makes-right. Two hundred years from now, when students are learning of the people who ‘tamed the west’, my greatest achievement will be remembered as ‘the one who followed the Pathfinders around and wrote down all of their great deeds’. The quiet, angry, weak one…weak, why did I write that? I’m not. Not weak, not useless, never useless. There is always a way to contribute, always a way to come out ahead. I circumvented divine right. Let them fight, let them destroy. That’s not my problem, not my area, not my job. Keep discovering, keep learning, keep myself interested until I die. I suppose I really will have to write a book if I want to get credit for anything by the time I’m finished here. A draft wouldn’t take long to write at all, it will probably take longer to properly codify my notes, which I guess makes it a good thing that I didn’t mail them all back to Mother yet. I suppose that’s vindication; there are worse legacies then ‘the man who wrote everything down.’ Category:Blog posts Category:Blog posts Category:Reflection